by John Boyd
At twilight, Ward smoked the pipes of peace with the children of the commune, eleven boys and five girls, feeling only a mild euphoria as they talked, speaking from spheres of alienation and listening to echoes from other spheres in the rock music on their transistor radio. Rapping with them, Ward elicited few generalizations about their life style.
They were supposed to be products of affluence, but most came from families which had long been casualties in the war against poverty. They were supposed to be products of permissiveness, but all had experienced parental indifference or brutality. Since few had salable skills, they were less drop-outs from society than rejects of the economy. They were supposed to be dirty, but most of the boys worked at odd jobs as dishwashers and at auto-cleaning racks and were well washed. He had heard they were promiscuous, and he assumed the rumor was true, since it was unlikely that they should differ from other strata of society in that respect.
As had Ward when young, they sought answers to the unanswerable, but unlike him they could not even frame the questions. Still, to learn their speech patterns, he listened attentively and, finally, sympathetically.
They seemed to value his audience and began to gather around him. He caught the drift of their changing opinion in the names they called him : Baldy, at first, then Groovy Head, and, after he rigged a sleeping hammock, finally Machismo.
With slight effort he could have become patriarch of the tribe, as Sadie was its matriarch, because he was a man of purpose and their minds were like medusae, amorphous, moved by random winds, tentacles trailing for chance nutrients. As the love generation, they were as eager to give affection as to receive it, and any man of authority, personal or official, he felt, might have commanded their loyalties by appreciating their affection. But he had other purposes.
Ward could not cavil over their choice of life styles. In the summers of his own youth, before he won a scholarship, he had gone long-haired and barefooted from necessity. And if one took the inscription at the base of the Statue of Liberty literally, these boys and girls were archetypal Americans.
Actually he felt a greater affinity toward Freddie, who was also work-oriented and purposeful. Freddie planned to study law in September to “find out what laws I can bend my way.”
Freddie’s hang-up was the white power structure, a nebulous entity that Ward himself had fought for half his lifetime. During a lull in their parking lot activities, Ward asked Freddie what he meant by “white power structure.”
“Man, I strum a mean bass fiddle in my own trio, The Untannables. But while a black artist like me’s mopping floors at the Daisy Chain, Glamorgan drags down twelve hundred a week mewling over buttercups, love, and all that she-it.”
Given time, Ward might have been sympathetic toward Freddie’s struggle with the white power structure, but Ward was too busy hustling, and a week after the haircut, he was trapped in Freddie’s black power structure.
Ward’s peonage began in the parking lot.
In his turban and silk Nehru pajama top, Ward was an impressive figure, and he struck the fancy of a kitten interested in Zen Buddhism. Since she considered him her guru, she often came down during her break between eleven and midnight when the floor show was in progress to discuss Zen.
On the night of his subjection to Freddie, Ward was demonstrating a method of attaining satori to the kitten in the rear of a limousine owned by a pussy-loving evangelist from Texas which was semi-permanently parked on the lot weekdays. In the beginning of the discussion Ward heard sirens along Sunset Boulevard, a not unusual sound, and as his demonstration got under way it sounded from the street as if a four-alarm fire had broken out. He was completing the zazen of the koan when he heard from the street level above a terse order shouted at Freddie, “Up against the wall, you black mother!” and knew a police emergency existed. Los Angeles police had entered the county sheriff’s territory.
“Keep low,” he whispered to the girl, who was also in a somewhat precarious position professionally, and they waited, an unusually long time, until the police completed their interrogation of Freddie and drove away. The kitten skittered back to her job, and Ward noticed the tail of her costume was broken. He started to follow and warn her, when some instinct bade him remain out of sight. Moments later, Freddie backed a car into the limousine, bumped it slightly, and got out to inspect the damage.
“Keep low, guru,” he whispered back to Ward. “I got some questions to ask. Have you assassinated a president?”
“You know better. With the money you pay me, I couldn’t buy an air rifle.”
“Is your real name Alexander Ward?”
“Yes.”
“Why did you tell me it was Atascadero?”
“I didn’t. You told me… What’s this all about?”
“They got a photograph of you, old-style with hair, wearing clothes like in the Minuteman commercial. What do they want you for?”
“Murder, I think. Can you find out?”
“Maybe, but keep low. Man, it’s like Bonnie and Clyde out here.”
Crouched in the car and listening to the sirens, Ward knew the dragnet was for no mere murderer. Since Cabroni was using his cadet photograph, it followed that the detective had an inkling about the rejuvenation method. If Ward were caught, his youth would be a dead giveaway. It was imperative that his secret be kept as long as one gene from a Patriot was lodged among mankind’s chromosomes. Humanity was not ready for immortality.
Within twenty minutes, Freddie was sidling alongside the limousine, whistling. He paused by the window.
“Here’s the scoop. It’s murder, man. The cops have roadblocks at every intersection between Doheny and Fairfax, and they’re pulling hair, looking for a wig-wearer with welts on his head.”
“My credit cards,” Ward groaned.
“Right on. I called a friend on the Free Press. One of the Patriots was caught signing your name to an airline credit card.”
“How can I get off the Strip, Freddie?”
“I can arrange it, if you’ll agree to a contract.”
“Let’s arrange first. Any contract signed under duress is not legal.”
“Did I hear you say legal’?” Freddie bent closer.
“I said ‘legal.’ ”
“Couldn’t hear for the sirens up there looking for you… I’ll take your word, Al. One thing I don’t want is your signature.”
“What do you want?”
“Half of anything you earn while you’re with me, after expenses for board and room are deducted.”
“How do you expect me to hustle a buck while hiding?”
“I’ll make arrangements.”
“You’re the damnedest person for making arrangements I’ve ever seen.”
“Are you a racist, Al?”
“Not before I met you.”
“That means you’re taking my offer.”
“It’s the only offer I’ve got.”
“Good. When you hear my car pull up, hop into the trunk.”
Crouched on the floor, Ward waited as Freddie arranged for a substitute lot attendant. Finally, he heard the rattle of Freddie’s coupé being backed alongside and the squeak of its trunk being lifted. He slithered out of the limousine, dodged across the lighted strip between cars, crawled into the trunk, and was locked into darkness companioned only by a spare tire, tools, and an empty bourbon bottle.
Freddie stopped twice on the way to their destination. Aurally alert, Ward deduced from outside sounds that the first stop was at a liquor store. He heard the clink of bottles and bemoaned Freddie’s Negro irresponsibility. But at the second stop Ward remained almost half an hour in his cramped confines before he heard anything at all. When he heard a woman’s footsteps approach, heard the right and left doors open and close on a murmur of voices, he cursed African eroticism aloud into the beginning roar of the transmission as his hand closed around the neck of the bourbon bottle. Freddie had stopped to pick up a date.
Later, when Ward felt the sharp turns and maneuverings to ge
t into a parking area, knowledge of his dependency on Freddie stifled his rage. Finally, the trunk opened and he emerged, without the bottle, into the semidarkness of a garage behind an old-fashioned brick apartment house. A woman of about forty, solidly built, wearing slacks, a striped sweater, and an Afro and carrying a large handbag, stood beside Freddie, who held a sack.
“Hattie, meet Al,” Freddie said to the woman, who nodded, distracted by apprehension.
“Hattie’s a make-up artist at the studios, Al,” Freddie said, “and she’s going ahead to open my kitchen door, over yonder. As soon as it’s open, you walk across and in, fast. Don’t run… Put your Social Security card or anything that could identify you in that bumper tire nailed against the wall. That’s my first rule: no papers in the house, for you or me.”
Freddie was taking his own pocket book and putting it in the tire. “It will all be safe, here,” he said, “because I lock the garage with a combination lock. There’ll be no keys around the house, either… Move out.”
Ward walked across the area from the line of garages to the building as Freddie pulled down the garage door, locked it, and followed. Inside, Freddie set his sack on the sink and walked down a hallway, turning on lights as he went. Behind him, Hattie followed, swaying as she walked.
They passed a bathroom on the left, a bedroom on the right, and entered a large, high-ceilinged living room with a fireplace against the wall to Ward’s left and the entrance to the right in an alcove formed by the outjut of a clothes closet.
Room furnishings were Sears Roebuck modern with a television and high-fidelity combo. Freddie motioned toward the divan for Ward to be seated.
“You’re on Van Ness, just south of Pico. Make yourself at home, but never answer the phone or the doorbell,” he said, opening the closet door and taking out a TV table.
“You shouldn’t have brought Hattie into this,” Ward said. “She could get into trouble.”
“Bless you, honey,” the woman smiled. “I got in trouble by being born.”
“She’ll get a bonus for her risk,” Freddie said, unfolding the TV table beside a vinyl-covered lounge chair and clicking on a floor lamp.
“Get me three clean towels, Freddie,” Hattie said, opening her bag for a folded plastic smock. Ward watched her slip into the smock. All of these people were supposed to have rhythm, but Hattie composed symphonies in the twist of her hips counterpointed by the bend of her elbows. Her only discordant note was the hairdo.
As if in answer to Ward’s unvoiced complaint, Hattie reached up and lifted the Afro from her head, laying it on the table. Beneath it was her own hair, glossy black. She raised both hands and fluffed it into bouffant waves in a gesture as feminine and intimate as a wriggle into panties.
“Hattie,” Ward’s astonishment overcame his reserve, “why do you wear that hayrick?”
“Child, I was just carrying it. That Afro’s for you, honey.” She chuckled at his consternation, and patted the lounger. “Now, you get out of them pajamas and come over here and lay down.”
Ward felt an inswoop of his world lines around her ovals as he slipped off his pajama top and pranced to the chair.
“Lordy mercy, honey,” Hattie exclaimed. “You’re a virgin.”
“Now, just how did you know that?”
Because Hattie seemed so proud of his innocence, he feared a negative implication might disappoint her. She made him feel like the teacher’s pet, and he liked the feeling.
“You cakewalk so shy,” she explained.
Freddie returned and handed Hattie the towels and set the sack on the table, removing four bottles of artificial tanning lotion.
“In the first phase of my three-phase master plan,” he said to Ward, “you pass over the color line backwards. Cost of materials, six-sixty plus tax.”
“For that I could buy enough tannic acid and liquid enzymes to bathe myself black all over.”
“What’d I tell you, Hattie?” Freddie said. “This man’s got machismo, even if he is a racist and murderer.”
“Lean back on the towel, honey,” Hattie said to Ward. “This boy’s no racist. First thing he worried about was me.”
“You’re right, Hattie,” Ward asserted. “Maybe I got a little racist after I met Freddie, but you’ve turned me all around.”
“There’s some tannic acid on the set I can borrow and save you from Freddie’s bookkeeping… Now, close your eyes, honey. I got to dye your eyebrows. Freddie, start dabbing that stuff on his hands and wrists. Dab, don’t rub.”
She was intent on him, as if he were a piece of clay to be molded and patted into shape, and it delighted him to be treated as an object rather than as a subject.
“This lotion won’t make you much more than a high yellow. I’ll get you some tannin over, tomorrow, so you be thinking about what shade you want, creamy chocolate, rich brown, gleaming ebony.”
“I want to be just like you, Hattie.”
“Now, that’s a sweet thing to say.”
Impulsively she squeezed his head against her breast and Ward knew the contact was an encounter. There was more to Hattie than warmth and understanding and ovateness—she was the quintessential black mammy.
“He’ll need more than skin to qualify,” Freddie said. “You don’t get soul by eating chitlings. I got to teach him how to walk and talk in phase two.”
“He’s got to learn rhythm,” Hattie said. “Now, honey, these nostril expanders going to be a little uncomfortable, at first. But you’ll get used to them.
“The Afro may be too big,” her voice was soft and reassuring, “but your welts help and I can build up your head here and there with latex.”
She pulled a rubber cap over his skull, scissored off portions she didn’t need, and fitted the wig. It was snug but not uncomfortable. “It’s best to be a little big to give your hair room to grow, but if a policeman grabs it, don’t pull contrary… You can open your eyes now, baby. I brought some brown contacts so the brothers won’t call you a blue-eyed devil.”
“What’s this third phase, Freddie?” Ward asked, sitting up as Hattie rummaged in her bag for the lenses.
Freddie thought for a moment.
“We’ll talk about it when you’re ready,” he finally said. “I don’t want you blowing your mind and splitting to Alabama.”
“To Alabama?”
“That’s where you come from, Mobile.”
As Hattie polished and inserted the brown contact lens, it occurred to Ward that Freddie had a standard operating procedure for concealing fugitives, but why the insistence on Mobile, Alabama? Criminals did not bother with pedigrees.
“Hattie, you’re the most,” Freddie exploded. “He looks like Harry Bellafonte, gone mod.”
“Freddie, get him a denim shirt to hide the white and that big mirror in your bedroom. I want my baby to see how pretty he is.”
As soon as Freddie had cleared the room, Hattie bent low and whispered. “I’ll be here in the morning with the tanning to give you the whole treatment. I’m not letting any fox spoil my baby’s vine, because, honey, I dig those big brown eyes.”
Except for a single barrier, becoming a Negro was not difficult for Ward after Hattie immersed him in a dilute solution of tannic acid and liquid enzymes and matched his overall color to her own. His ease at crossing the color line he attributed to Anglo-Saxon adaptability and his previous grounding in theory; he was well versed in the poetry of Paul Dunbar and the essays of James Baldwin.
On Sunday, Freddie tested him with an outing along Central Avenue, and Ward enjoyed his new peer group’s informality, gusto, and mirth, which existed despite the depression of the 1930s which still lingered in the black community. Ward’s verbal sensitivity demanded a substitute for Freddie’s favorite expression, but he found such a wide range of speech that his expletive, “Fe-cees,” was merely considered a novelty.
Their evening ended on a note that would recur. Ward and a telephone operator with an A.B. in English from Morris Brown were discussing th
e poetry of Winthrop Mackworth Praed when Freddie came to the booth.
“Tarbaby, we got to split. I’m busted.”
They paid for their outing with a three-day diet of chili beans.
Confined as he was, Ward’s life might have been tedious had it not been for Hattie’s lessons in Afro rhythms given whenever Freddie’s absence and her work permitted. He became adept at the Senegalese Shimmy, the Simba Crawl, and the Congo Conga, but he never learned the Springbok Spin, even though he practiced alone with two pillows.
Hattie comforted him in his failure. No white man had ever performed a Springbok Spin, she told him, but he sensed her disappointment. Nevertheless, when she and her estranged husband were about to be reconciled, she granted him an unofficial diploma after he performed a medley of Afro rhythms to a record by Thelonius Monk.
The Springbok Spin was the only color barrier Ward could not break.
An old familiar dread returned to Ward in the apartment on Van Ness—poverty. Torn as he was between a growing nostalgia for Ester and his longing for Diana, the bonds that linked him to Freddie became both stronger and more galling. As household budget master, he began to wake up at Freddie’s return from the parking lot to count out the parking tips on the kitchen table. A massive pile of quarters yielded only a few dollars, at times as low as seven, and the look of defeat and harassment on Freddie’s face brought Ward memories of his father, counting out his W.P.A. wages with the same expression of defeat. Facing Freddie over the futile stacks of coins, Ward felt an unfocused anguish for the lad more profound than the pain he had felt from the Barber’s sprocket chain.
All Freddie’s talent for hustling was adequate for only one man’s survival, and Ward, a prisoner of time as well as of space, was helpless to assist his companion.
As his depression deepened, Ward’s loneliness grew stronger. At night, as he tossed on the couch in the living room, his hand would reach out for Ester, and unless his palm cupped the overstuffed arm rest of the sofa, he would awaken from loneliness. One night he missed the arm rest and awakened with a line from Gerard Manley Hopkins, altered by his subconscious, ringing in his mind:
